Source:
https://scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3080835/hong-kong-chief-executive-carrie-lam-doubles-down-defence
Hong Kong/ Politics

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam says Beijing interference row distracts from the opposition’s shackling of Legislative Council

  • Liaison office and HKMAO ‘can certainly express their views when exercising their power of supervision’
  • She adds recent controversy over the agencies has drawn focus from pan-democrats’ filibustering antics
Beijing’s liaison office in Hong Kong, one of two bodies which criticised local legislators, creating the recent controversy. Photo: Bloomberg

Hong Kong’s leader has urged the public to focus on how opposition lawmakers are paralysing the legislature rather than the ongoing row over the powers of Beijing’s offices supervising the city’s affairs, insisting she has clarified they have the right to comment and criticise.

Amid an intensifying row over the roles of the State Council’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office (HKMAO) and Beijing’s liaison office in the city, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor on Tuesday insisted that the two agencies’ recent broadsides against local legislators did not constitute interference.

She said the real issue was “malicious filibustering” by pan-democrats to stop bills progressing through the Legislative Council, which has been hamstrung by the failure to elect a House Committee chairman.

Lam also apologised for any confusion caused by her government’s conflicting statements on the matter last week.

Carrie Lam said the liaison office had not interfered with affairs that Hong Kong was meant to handle on its own. Photo: K.Y. Cheng
Carrie Lam said the liaison office had not interfered with affairs that Hong Kong was meant to handle on its own. Photo: K.Y. Cheng

But she did not make clear whether the main clause in Article 22 of the city’s Basic Law – which guarantees non-interference by mainland China bodies – covers the two agencies, despite calls from legal groups and lawmakers for the government to state its position.

Speaking before her weekly Executive Council meeting, Lam echoed Beijing’s stance that the liaison office, when it criticised pro-democracy lawmakers for creating a logjam in the Legislative Council, had not interfered with affairs that Hong Kong was meant to handle. She said it had the right to oversee the city on behalf of the central government.

Lam noted that Beijing had granted Hong Kong “a high degree of autonomy” in its operations. “That doesn’t mean it lost the power to supervise the city,” she said.

“Just like the Hong Kong laws delegated power to the chief executive to make decisions and appoint personnel. But in daily operations, I very often delegate my powers to principal officials and department heads. It doesn’t mean I have given up my rights to supervise how the orders are implemented.”

Lam did not clarify whether the liaison office and the HKMAO are restricted by the main clause in Article 22, which says no mainland authority shall interfere with affairs that the city administers on its own.

She argued that delving into the matter “defamed the roles of the central authorities in Hong Kong” and distracted attention from the antics of the pro-democracy camp.

“People who regard legitimate and rational speeches of the liaison office made on behalf of the central government as interference have ulterior motives,” she said.

“The crux of the matter”, she said, was the “malicious filibustering” by Civic Party lawmaker Dennis Kwok, who she said had paralysed the legislature by deliberately stalling the election of a chairman of the House Committee, which scrutinises bills introduced to the council and decides when they will be tabled for final votes.

Speaking on a radio programme on Tuesday, Martin Lee Chu-ming, founding chairman of the Democratic Party, argued that if the two offices were not covered by Article 22, then the wording would have stated an exemption for the Hong Kong branch of Xinhua news agency, which served as Beijing’s de facto embassy in the city until its return to Chinese rule, becoming the liaison office in 2000.

Lee, who sat on the Basic Law Drafting Committee – before resigning in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square crackdown of June 1989 – said he had never imagined that a clear provision such as Article 22 would spark interpretations.

“At that time, I hadn’t thought about these things. It already states ‘every department’ – there is still an exception?” he said.

According to a telephone poll of 1,005 people by the Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute, Lam’s approval rating in mid-April was 27.7 points, up from a historic low of 18.2 points two months earlier.

Researchers said 48 per cent of those surveyed gave Lam a rating of zero points, and that her latest net approval rating was -54 per cent.

Edward Tai Chit-fai, data science manager of the programme, said it was a “bad standard” as almost half gave Lam the lowest possible rating.

“It reflects that most people do not accept the chief executive’s performance,” Tai said.

Close to 70 per cent of those surveyed said they were dissatisfied with the government’s performance, while 21 per cent held an opposing view.

Additional reporting by Kanis Leung